Going mad sending email!

Mention sending email and you picture a major undertaking: sitting at the computer typing endlessly, searching endlessly, in a thoroughly miserable frame of mind. In reality, once you know and use an effective platform, all of it becomes easy. Remember that email is only a tool. What you need to get hold of is your recipients — your customers. If sending email is taking that much of your time, what you need is a platform.

You need an Email Service Provider (ESP). The tools they provide are broadly:

1. List management — organising and listing your regular recipients, and automatically adding new subscribers.
2. eDM templates, so your email has character and suits recipients’ tastes.
3. Large recipient volumes, with the hardware behind it to handle bulk sending effectively.
4. Fast response and automatic scheduled sending, so subscribers receive email on time.
5. A tracking system that counts sends and gathers recipient responses: whether the email was opened, how many times, bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes.
6. Handling of mail flagged as spam, so your sending address or identity does not get blocked.
7. Sufficient formatting flexibility so email reads easily across different clients.

There are two broad categories of provider. The first is the general email service provider (GESP), which offers everything above. The second is the marketing automation platform (MAP), which offers all of that plus the ability to generate interactive behaviour with recipients and respond appropriately based on how a reader engages, with the aim of retaining customers.

We want to emphasise that the customer relationship is long-term and even permanent. It matters more than any single transaction, because that relationship refers further business. Even if you only have 30 email addresses, put them into a system: it will help you send effectively, and it will bring you many more than 30.